The present invention relates generally to electronic communication between individuals or interlocutors, through the automated support of machines and, more particularly, to a method and system that facilitate use of existing equipments for communication between interlocutors.
The constant purpose of technology is to progress for reducing of the burden imposed by the real world on the life of human beings. Modern equipments of communication like telephones, mobile phones or computers with the Internet, offers many easy ways of communication. The other side of the coin is the overabundance of messages easy transmitted and not always good targeted. This possible overabundance of messages, sometimes undesired, can generate new burdens for which solutions were already searched in background art.
DE 10114649 discloses a method allowing to set a filter in a messages database to let incoming messages be disabled or transmitted to a mobile or conventional telephone in function of their source. The human being still has the burden of determining undesired sources and to manually set the filter. The method requires initially comparing incoming subscriber directory numbers.
US2003/0050988 discloses e-mail system providing filtering methodology on a per-domain basis. Known interfaces like Sendmail Mail Filter API allowing third party software to validate and modify messages as they pass through the mail transport system, predetermined rules are applied on incoming messages for permitting or not a connection. The problem is that rules based on, for example a great number of messages from the domain are not necessary relevant about the interest of one or many messages in the flow for the receiver.
US2003/0012348 discloses a method and system for filter based message processing in a unified messaging system. A Unified message server centralises messages from different sources. The Unified message server can compute not only text but also voice with a voice recognition system. The user can request that messages from a particular source or regarding a specific subject are discarded, rather than stored for later retrieval. The user still has the burden to built the profile, the static form of which at a given time, not necessary being adapted to an incoming message of a non foreseen kind.
US2003/0050981 discloses a method, apparatus, and program to forward and verify multiple digital signatures in electronic mail. If a message has a portion with no corresponding digital signature or if one or more of the digital signatures is not trusted, the user may handle the message accordingly or a mail server may discard it. Such systems only work in a context of specific kind of messages and not for any kind of message.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,023,700 discloses an electronic mail distribution system for integrated electronic communication. Options are used to define a set of rules to be applied to inbound and outbound messages so that messages are sent and received in accordance with the preferences of the senders and receivers. The predefined rules of the set of rules, are not adapted to situation which is not foreseen and doesn't necessarily reflect a potential interest of the interlocutor for a message of exception.
US2002/0159575 discloses a method and system for filtering notification of e-mail messages. The system includes a user interface that permits subscribers to populate filter lists with e-mail message attributes. A notification system selectively notifies therewith subscribers of incoming e-mail messages based on the contents of the contents of their respective filter lists. The problem is that a potential interlocutor who could be interested by a message, would be not notified when not subscribing before. Similar system and method is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,400,810.
US2002/0147988 discloses a method and apparatus for notifying users of filtered e-mail using a set top box. A user specifies filtering criteria which then detects the arrival of an e-mail fulfilling the specified criteria, and notifies the user accordingly. The user has no knowledge of a potential interesting message outside of the filtering criteria previously specified.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,999,932 discloses a system and method for filtering unsolicited electronic mail messages using data matching and heuristic processing. At least one heuristic process is provided to determine whether the electronic mail message may be of interest to the user. An heuristic is based on a set of rules activated when data of the header don't specifically match with an associated predetermined field. An activated rule searches for example in the field “FROM” if the domain of the source instead of the source itself is assured to be junk-free. To be junk-free doesn't necessarily means that the message is of potential interest for the receiver. It is still boring to specify a great number of rules which by nature, will be not appropriate for any unforeseen case.
GB 2366164 discloses servers having filter data stored therein for selecting messages to be forwarded to user stations in dependence on filter criteria specified by the users. Hereto, the burden of the user remains, induced by a priori specification of the criteria which, even in great number, could always be incomplete, simply because the user may have some difficulties to forecast the interest of the content of a message without having read it before.
WO 01/97089 discloses a secure forwarding system. After processing in a filter layer, a received message from a sender and further retrieving recipient delivery preferences, the received message is forwarded or not to the intended recipient. The system needs to provide a filter unit in the filter layer for supporting a particular messaging format. Because it needs to know the intended recipient to retrieve recipient delivery preferences, the system will not transmit a message to a non intended recipient who could have interest in the message.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,438,215 discloses a method and system for filter based message processing in a unified messaging system. A mechanism enable a user to filter certain message attributes such as the identification of the sender, recipient or the subject header or the message type. The content of the message per se cannot constitute an attribute because it cannot be predicted as a whole by nature when containing information.
US2002/0116463 synthesises well the general orientation of the state of the art, that is to filter unwanted messages. Application of rules is based upon the preponderance of predetermined words within an e-mail message. The problem is that a message with predetermined words can be interesting for the recipient. Some content of an identified suspect message is transmitted to the recipient who has to decide if the message is really unwanted. New words may be added to the base to complete the predetermination of the rules. The user is still called on services of filtering process, inducing a burden for him. A message without predetermined words will not be filtered, even when not necessarily unwanted, the message is without interest for the recipient.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,421,709 discloses e-mail filters and method thereof. It is necessary to let a user compile or be provided with character strings which a user would not wish to receive, for a first filter. It is further necessary to let a user compile or be provided with character strings which a user would wish to receive, for a second filter. The user has to review results of rejection. The user may wish less contribution to the process.
The state of the art provides not a full satisfaction for solving a known technical problem in the domain of machine-to-machine, machine-to-human, and/or interpersonal communication. In communication between individuals through electronic media, it is impossible for individuals to really determine their interest in an incoming message before they have got knowledge or read this message. Likewise, it is impossible for an individual to know if a stimulus, a signal or a message is interesting for another individual before this message, signal or stimulus is acknowledged, acquired or read by the receiver.
This problem implies that individuals, machines or organizations may receive signals, stimuli or messages they are not interested in. Inversely, individuals, machines or organizations may send stimuli, signals or messages that are not interesting for their receivers.
Another known problem in the technical domain of communication is the impossibility for an individual or a group of individuals (e.g. an organization) to know in advance if they would have a propensity or a will to communicate with another individual. This known problem is known as the learning curve of communication. In order to know if another individual would be interesting to interact with, a person has to experience and actually communicate with this other person. This problem in interpersonal communications increases the risk of unwanted interactions, and diminishes the propensity to communicate to unknown individuals.
The invention supplies to individuals the probability level of their own interest in an incoming signal, stimulus or message, before they get actual knowledge of its contents. It also supplies to individuals the names of potential receivers for a stimulus, message, text or content that they possess and are willing to share, without knowing who, in the population of people they interact with, will be interested in them.
Another problem, which is critical to the industry, is that individuals may have to process a lot of stimuli in order to build their own knowledge of the interest they have in potential interlocutors and/or signals, stimuli or messages. This problem creates information overload and bottlenecks at the individual and organizational level. People spend a lot of time building their appreciation of the interest of interaction of other individuals. They also spend a lot of time searching for people who have stimuli, signals, information or messages that could be interesting for them. The experience of individuals in this matter is built ex-post, that is to say that this learning is postdictive (learnt after having had the experience of the interaction). On the contrary, if it were possible, individuals would greatly benefit from a predictive learning of the propensity of their interlocutors to communicate with them.
Likewise, when individuals possess or generate information or messages, so to express or share their knowledge, they have to rely on their learning curve, tacit knowledge, experience or intuition to determine who might be interested in their production, or the message, stimulus, signal, content they possess. The likeliness of this information or knowledge not being of great interest for the chosen interlocutors is not null. Consequently, knowledge is not transmitted to the adequate people in organizations, and may never reach them. There might be individuals who are interested in this stimulus, message, chunk of knowledge, but who are unknown to the sender or creator of this knowledge.
To date, the problem for the industry is that a machine cannot generate this predictive knowledge of the mutual or asymmetric propensity to communicate between individuals automatically. The industry is forced to ask individuals to discriminate manually the people or the messages that are not welcome. Likewise, the problem to date for the industry is that a machine cannot generate the names of the potential receivers who might be interested in a message or chunk of knowledge as well.
Existing technical solutions and answers to this problem require a human intervention, either from the interlocutor (here after, the “communicator”) or by the organization managing the communication system (hereafter, the “operator”). Previous technical solutions to this problem were therefore based on the following technical processes and characteristics where the communicator was asked to define manually, by checking a list, or by integrating the data by himself in a man-machine interface, the list of words, chunks of text, or list of persons he or she did not want to interact with. This technology is known as filtering. The problem is however persistent because people who can be unwanted can still send a very interesting message and vice-versa, people who are welcome to communicate may sometimes send very unwanted or uninteresting message. Hence, filtering technologies that require the brutal discrimination of senders or text are not to date optimal solutions.
Other patented processes proposed to generate a set of rules, based on the analysis of the behavior of the communicator. These previous technical solutions such as the one disclosed in FR 2830642, were mostly based on the order of reading emails, interpreted as a hierarchical prioritization by the communicator. Previous technical solutions also automatically record and observe how people were opening, closing, displacing, destroying, the speed of reading their incoming messages, and were generating rules about the behavior of the communicator. Previous technical solutions are relying on “pre-defined” actions and explicit communication models that were under surveillance as to generate rules concerning the behavior of the communicator. The types of action (speed of reaction, length of feedback, speed of destruction of incoming unwanted messages, etc.) are used in previous technical solutions to learn what interlocutors or content the communicator was more likely to discriminate. However, previous technical solutions are not capable to exhaustively and simultaneously address the combination of content, context and individuals. Also, previous technical solutions are relying on pre-conceived assumptions on the communication between individuals. For example, previous technical solutions could declare that an interlocutor was not welcome because his or her messages were read very quickly and displaced or destroyed very soon after they were received. Yet, studies have shown that individuals in the working place who receive romantic messages from their love partners tend to destroy them very quickly for the protection of their privacy. Previous technological solutions based on rules generation would have declared these incoming messages and senders are very unwanted.
Other previous technical solutions are based on “collaborative filtering”. People preferences for a content are recorded when they consult a content or receive/emit a message. Correlations are built between people and content, and a feedback can be given to any individual under the form: “people who have chosen this content also appreciated these other contents”. Collaborative filtering can be applied to contents, objects or individuals. Technical solutions that try to match people according to their interest are also using collaborative filtering technologies. Collaborative filtering cannot, however, take a chunk of knowledge, information or a stimulus, and find the one person who is the most probably interest in reading this message, and does not solve the above technical problem of the industry.
An object of the invention is to solve the general problem of matching individuals and contents, under the form of any stimulus that can be transformed in a digital or electronic form.
Another object of the invention is to support and accompany interpersonal communications the domain of life support systems.
A more precise object of the invention is to provide individuals with technical means allowing them to predict their interest and/or propensity to reply to incoming signal, stimulus or message without even reading or get knowledge of it, and reversibly, to predict who would be interested in a message, or would have a propensity to communicate with them, without even getting in touch, or knowing these potential interlocutors.